SITA UK said it hopes to recycle up to 2,000 tonnes of food waste during the first wave of the service, which is focusing on businesses producing large amounts of food waste – such as pubs and restaurants, before expanding to cover businesses across the entire city once the service has become established.
A spokesman for the company said he was unable to account the exact number of businesses involved in the roll-out of the service but explained that the initial response to the service had been “quite good” and added that the firm would be “pushing to get more companies on board”.
Companies which sign up to the service are issued with kitchen caddies, complete with liners known as ‘bio-bags', and a larger container to be put out for collection. Collections are carried out at least once a week.
Commenting on the introduction of the service, Graham Mayes, chief operating officer at SITA UK, said: “Educating businesses about how to recycle food waste and the benefits, is an important aspect of our service. We intend to provide information sessions to every customer that signs up.
“We also think it is important to encourage customers by providing them with information about carbon savings they are making. This should help to keep up momentum and help avoid contamination in the food waste containers.”
Treatment
Food waste collected by the service is set to be treated by SITA's in-vessel composting (IVC) facilities in the Midlands. Although, the firm is hopeful that, in the future, it would be able to use a proposed 100,000 tonnes-a-year capacity IVC and anaerobic digestion facility, which it has submitted for planning approval at Mitcham in South London (see letsrecycle.com story).
The spokesman told letsrecycle.com: “SITA has plans to develop infrastructure in the capital to deal with this sort of waste and our intention is, if we are able to develop infrastructure such as Mitcham that would work well.”
The firm added that its plans were aimed to coincide with Mayor of London Boris Johnson's ambition of increasing food waste collections, as identified in his draft municipal waste management strategy published in January (see letsrecycle.com story).
SITA UK claimed that research from environmental consultancy London Research Solutions – who they worked with to help develop the business collections – had shown that businesses were likely to be surprised by the amount of food waste they generate.
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